Hyperon

hyperon, quasi-stable member of a class of subatomic particles known as baryons that are composed of three quarks. More massive than their more-familiar baryon cousins, the nucleons (protons and neutrons), hyperons are distinct from them in that they contain one or more strange quarks. Hyperons, in order of increasing mass, include the lambda-zero (Λ0) particle, a triplet of sigma (Σ) particles, a doublet of xi (Ξ) particles, and the omega-minus (Ω−) particle. Each of the seven particles, detected during the period 1947–64, also has a corresponding antiparticle. The discovery of the omega-minus hyperon was suggested by the Eightfold Way of classifying hadrons, the more-general group of subatomic particles to which hyperons are assigned. Hadrons are composed of quarks and interact with one another via the strong force.

Hyperons are produced by the strong force in the time it takes for a particle traveling at nearly the speed of light to cross the diameter of a subatomic particle, but their decay by the weak force (which is involved in radioactive decay) takes millions of millions of times longer. Because of this behaviour, hyperons—along with K-mesons, with which they are often produced—were named strange particles. This behaviour has since been ascribed to the weak decays of the specific quarks—also called strange—that they contain.

Click anywhere inside the article to add text or insert superscripts, subscripts, and special characters.
You can also highlight a section and use the tools in this bar to modify existing content:

Add links to related Britannica articles!
You can double-click any word or highlight a word or phrase in the text below and then select an article from the search box.
Or, simply highlight a word or phrase in the article, then enter the article name or term you'd like to link to in the search box below, and select from the list of results.

Note: we do not allow links to external resources in editor.
Please click the Web sites link for this article to add citations for
external Web sites.